Hairballs and Dingleberries

September Post (belated) 

A Canadian friend on Facebook blogs about her rescue cat. Recently a neighbor in her condominium complained about the cat’s hairballs and dingleberries. I’m not sure how the neighbor would even know about these, as the cat stays inside or on the balcony. The neighbor must be a nosy balcony peeper with a dangling microphone. Anyone who has ever had cat knows that a hairball gives plenty of notice as the cat hacks one up. But on a balcony, I would think the sound would be muffled by the wind.

 

I’ve often wondered why some people call them hairballs and others call them fur balls. This is what my brief research determined. Technically the term fur is used with mammals with thick body hair (and therefore cats) while it’s still attached.

 

Hairballs describe the fur that cats swallow and then hack up. If the fur is sparse, as with humans, we generally call it hair even while it’s still attached. If you’d like more detail on this distinction, visit: https://www.thesprucepets.com/cat-fur-vs-hair-554813. We call it hair once it’s fallen out onto our clothes or our furniture and we’re trying to brush it off.

 

Dingleberries were new to me. It turns out they collect around the exit hatch at the cat’s rear, especially on those with long hair. They require constant, fastidious grooming to prevent blockage. The balcony peeper might have observed that, especially if she uses binoculars. I imagine a persistent peeper would. They’d undoubtedly have a kit with all their peeping tools in it. And a notepad to keep track of their findings by date and time to report to the condo board.

 

The dingleberry name reminded me of one of those silly jokes from decades ago. “What do you call red crepe paper that hangs from the ceiling? A dingle dangle. What do you call green crepe paper that hangs from the ceiling? Crepe paper. Dingle dangles only come in red.” I warned you that it was silly.

 

Getting back to the dingleberries at a cat’s exit hatch—this could get gross. I’ve had nine cats in about forty years. None were long hair and all of the females were spayed. I never noticed any dingleberries. What I did notice was that when some of my girls got older, their lower bellies began to droop and they flopped when they walked. The hair at their back belly also got longer. I referred to it all as their fuzzy baggies.

 

I came up with that name from a commercial on the radio for Fazi Battaglia Verdicchio wine. A man was in a liquor store wanting to order it but couldn’t pronounce it. One of his attempts was Fuzzy Baggies. He finally settled on Fizzy What’s It, as I recall.

 

Stella Periwinkle, one of my current girls, now has fuzzy baggies. Kallie Jasmine is more petite and is still svelte. Once I had dingleberries on my radar, I decided to inspect Stella’s exit hatch. What I found shocked me. Dingleberries galore, some larger ones almost blocking that out ramp. I pulled one or two off for her, taking some fur along with it. She was not pleased so I stopped.

 

There must have been at least four to six of those buggers still there. I decided to make this a multi-day project with regular inspections once I had her completely de-dingleberried. Don’t even ask where that project stands.

 

Just to be safe, I also checked Kallie’s rear end. No dingleberries there; no surprise because her fur is not very long. However, she seems to be more prone to hacking up hairballs than Stella is. Her pre-hack meow is so pitiful that I usually have plenty of time to find her and catch the blob in a tissue as it comes up. I say usually because there are occasions that I don’t get there on time. Cleaning throw up on carpeting is not pleasant.

 

Neither is stepping on a dried up hairball days after it was deposited. I imagine that happens when I’m out on errands. Once those dry, they blend in with the Oriental rugs and it can be weeks before I happen upon them.

 

It took a friend’s Facebook post on hairballs and dingleberries to get me thinking about all of this. I hope my column has you searching your rugs and examining your pet’s exit ramps, too.

 

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